


Shoulder to Shoulder

by HardingHightown



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24028474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HardingHightown/pseuds/HardingHightown
Summary: "An AU idea creeps into my mind. They’re separated when she leaves their small town to pursue an education in the city, as he always knew she would… then she returns, not realising he would have lived his life apart from her. He has a wife, a child, his own small business… and has to face the truth that all the improvement she has undertaken has always been with the intention of building a life with him."An older fic from Tumblr imported for archiving.
Relationships: Female Aeducan/Gorim Saelac
Kudos: 1





	Shoulder to Shoulder

There are things that have disappeared into time. The memory of their first kiss. How, and indeed if, he first told her that he loved her. The feeling of a stomach sinking when it was said, if it was ever said, or is that feeling just the feeling of love? Touches, a hundred lost touches. The place where he first held her without fear of the world outside. The moment she left. How it felt to be part of a world without her. How long it took to stop thinking of her every day.

The town seemed to become a different place with her in it. The wind changed direction, the sea calmed. Gorim noticed the looks he was getting too. They had all assumed something that was just not the case. He would have to deal with it, but not today,

Today his son looks to him for guidance as he sits over the river, a long rod hanging in front of them. Today is the first day of fishing. Today is the first day his son joins him.

It is a quiet thing, but an important one. They sit in almost silent prayer, eyes cast out over the expanse of still water, the noise of the birds on wing and the occasional splash in the water the only accompaniment. There is open tea in a flask steaming. It is quiet, it is gentle, and it is full of love.

His son has many of his features, Gorim has been told this often, from his thick mass of red curls to his sky blue eyes, but he has his mother’s temperament. Cool. Still. Not reckless, not brash. Every comment is thought through, meant wholly. There is no room for frivolity, and it is beautiful, serene. His boy is only thirteen years old but wise as any man that has come before him. Here, looking out over the sea, a slight smile plays at the edge of his lips, and that smile, Gorim thinks, belongs wholly to his dear wife.

Thirteen years.

He had not thought he would ever marry, truth be told. He had not considered it, even when caught up in the whirlwind of love for her. It seemed, in the end, to be not something he wanted to do, but instead something that would make things solid. A good piece of craftsmanship needs to be balanced out. Sigrid was balance, was kindness and understanding and patience. When she took him to bed that first time after too much beer and a suggestion from the men in the tavern, it had not been with fire in her eyes or a burning desire to make him lust for her. It had been slow. It had been long kisses, learning of each other. It had ended with him on top of her, almost crushing her, his arms wrapped tightly so she wouldn’t disappear.

It had felt like she might not have even been there.

To this day, she is a spectre in their home, appearing behind him, around him, there to prop him up. His keys are in her hand when he searches. Her food is in his belly before he even knows he is hungry. Her touch is warm on his skin before he even notices her breathing and she has given him what he needed most, without him ever even knowing he needed it at all.

His son will be an excellent fisherman.

—

Rhein did not like the town, she had decided that many years ago in her absence from it. It was small and governed by stupid men. There was nothing to do. The sea stank of fish and the people had rot from the water in their brains. The stone was polluted. It was a town diseased.

And yet nowhere else had anybody like him.

She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t. She had asked herself regularly why she felt like that, why one person out of the thousands she had encountered in the time she had been away should command such a strong impulse. Why the memory of one man overshadows all other men since. She is aware of the idea of nostalgia.

And yet nowhere else had anybody like him.

Nobody else inspired that brightness inside of her. She had it on her own, that was a given thing, but she had found that out through laborious concern. To work out what sparked inspiration, lust, determination to succeed had taken practice, took effort to put in place every time she needed it. He, however, inspired it with a smile. When she was around him, around memory of him, when she re-read those letters they had sent each other over ten years previously, she was filled with the most intense love for it all. The most intense love for all she thought she had the potential to be.

Now, memory had ceased to be enough. The letters had lost their spell. She needed him, and that was that.

—

“Do you like fishing, da?”

Halden’s voice always surprised Gorim. Deeper than a child his age ought to be, but still with the hint of naivety that marked him as a youth.

“It is what I do.”

“But do you like it?”

Gorim paused on the question. In truth, he had not thought on it. He had been born to fish. His son would fish. It was not something worth the questioning.

“It is a fine thing to do.”

“That’s not an answer, is it?”

They sat in silence for a while more, watching the lures bob in the water before them. Lines today. Nets next week. Out on the boat in a month, Gorim thought to himself.

“Do you like to read, Da?”

Gorim thought to summers years ago, reading passages out loud, running his hands through her hair. It was long then, before she’d cut it off, a mess of tangles he could unravel.

“Not especially.”

“You have a lot of books.”

“I do.”

Halden looked at him, Gorim’s own eyes looking at him.

“Why do you have them if you don’t want to read them?”

—

Why was she here when she had no desire to be in this place?

The whole town carried a thousand tiny memories. Her brothers fighting her in the snow. Her beloved father teaching her to ride her bicycle. The smallest memory of her mother scolding her for running away. Rejection. Bliss. The feeling of not belonging. The feeling she could never feel at home in a town with so much bad blood.

He was of this town. How could she forget that?

She steadied her memory, and took herself in to a new building, one that sold chain coffee.

She ordered a tea.

—

“Sometimes, we like to keep things, even if they don’t really mean what they used to.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will someday, son.”


End file.
